


and yet it moves

by MoonyJ4M



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Bottom Dean, Case Fic, Guilty Dean, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Soulless Dean, temporary memory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 03:57:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4464578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonyJ4M/pseuds/MoonyJ4M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam knows, in some deep, weird level, that something is missing; the very lack of it is almost a presence now, a response he doesn’t get in the morning, steps he doesn’t hear in the kitchenette, a song that’s not playing, like the missing weight to set his equilibrium in place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and yet it moves

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SPN J2 Big Bang 2015. Thanks a lot to m14mouse for the lovely art, and to Dri for being, once again, the first reader and for encouraging me when I wasn't sure if the fic was worth a shot. 
> 
> [Art Masterpost](http://m14mouse.livejournal.com/90557.html) | [Fic on LJ](http://moonyj4m.livejournal.com/5891.html)

“Fucking hate cities,” Dean grunts, as if the brake lights of the car right in front of them are personally offending him.

“No, you don’t,” Sam says, not really taking the eyes out of his phone. He’s not doing anything with it, though; just going through the contacts list over and over again. He hears Dean mutter a “whatever” and lay back on the seat, defeated by the urban traffic at least. “No, you’re not doing this,” he says more firmly a minute later, when he catches Dean eyeing the roadside and reaching for the wheel again.

Dean sighs and falls back again on the seat, a hand on the wheel and other on his knee, tapping the rhythm of whatever it is that is playing on the radio. Sam is not happy with their situation either, but it has less to do with the fact that they are stuck in traffic than with anything else.

He thinks of taking the map, but it is not like they really need it now. On his side of the window there is nothing but an empty field and more cars a little further; cars in front of them, cars behind them. At least it is getting darker and they hopefully won’t get cooked inside the Impala as well.

“Would’ya fucking _move_ ,” Dean slams the horn and shouts to the outside, closing the window after. A short orchestra of discontent drivers follow his lead. It’s more on principle than out of real anger; he’s mostly frustrated at this point. “We could’ve got to the city two hours ago.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees automatically, his mind still not fully in the moment. He only gets antsier by the minute. Dean is in not much of a better state; he had changed from tapes to the radio three times already, until he just gave up and turned it off. Sam is honestly tempted to turn it on again, if only just to have some background noise other than his thoughts.

“We’re gonna have to talk about it some time, you know,” he says, ripping the band-aid at once. They’ve been walking on eggshells for the last two towns; Sam notices Dean’s hand closing in a fist when he sucks in a breath, has to admire how he hasn’t exploded yet.

“We’re really not,” he says, not looking at Sam. “Actually, we already _did_.”

“ _We_ did?” Sam snorts. This is going to be just great. “‘Cause as far as I remember, _you_ took your stuff and said that wasn’t gonna happen again. See how that goes for talking.”

“It was a mistake, okay? Not what I said, but what… What happened.”

“You can say we fucked, Dean, we’re both adults,” Sam would be more upset about him calling it a mistake if it wasn’t for the look of absolute terror in Dean’s face. “So much for your great speech, it did happen again.”

Sam’s angry but he’s also weak, and when Dean does look at him it’s like he’s begging for it to stop. Sam feels the fight left him, suddenly as tired as only arguing with Dean with no perspective of resolution can make him feel.

“We’re not gonna talk about this,” Dean says quietly, looking ahead again. It is probably the most sincere thing he’s said all day.

“Was it that bad?” Sam says, because he’s only human and he stills wants him to feel bad. Dean closes his eyes and swallows, opens them again to find the traffic finally moving.

“We’re not gonna talk about this,” he repeats, and puts the car in gear.

**.x.**

It takes them another two hours to find a motel, and an eternity to the lady at the cashier to find them a key. For a moment, Sam honestly thinks Dean will ask for separate rooms, but he doesn’t. They unload their things in bed in silence and Dean shuts the door when he goes to the bathroom, the message clear enough for Sam.

Sam figures he should be used to Dean shutting him off like this by now, considering it has always been his default reaction to any remotely uncomfortable subject, but it never gets any easier. Sam almost admires the way Dean is able to live with such elephant in the room for so long; he remembers what happened as it had been yesterday, not nearly ten years ago.

Brady had sneaked out of the dorm at eleven, not without pointedly calling Sam a loser a few more times. Sam had just given him the finger and gone back to his books, more to make a point than because he really wanted to study. He had pushed them away as soon as the door closed, sick and tired of the tribulations of American politics. It was not like Sam didn’t like going out, though; it was just that frat parties were a little too much.

Sam had walked up to the window, tried to distinguish the people walking in the street. There was a bonfire going on somewhere nearby and if it wasn’t for the cracking of the fire and the sounds of the party he could swear he had heard a familiar roar of an engine earlier that night.

It had been just wishful thinking, though. Like when he thought his phone was vibrating in class when it actually was not. There has been nothing but radio silence from Dean for a while and Sam didn’t really know what to make of that. The noise outside had started to fade as it started to rain, people in the street ran for shelter as it got heavier, and Sam just stayed there, enjoying the watch.

He had been distracted enough not to notice that there was someone knocking on the door until the knocking got harder. It should be Brady coming back to get something he forgot, but Sam figured he would probably be calling his phone at this point if that was the case. He couldn’t say he was caught completely off guard by who was behind the door when he opened it, but it knocked the wind out of him anyway.

“Hey,” Dean said, leaning on the doorframe and sounding as tired as he looked.

“Dean, _what the hell_ ,” Sam said, getting out of the way for him to come in and taking a quick look at the corridor. “How did you get in?” he asked, but Dean just scoffed.

“A couple people saw me down there but they looked at me like they think I just killed someone,” he said, sitting at Sam’s study desk without ceremony.

“Yeah, well, can’t think why they’d do it.”

Sam had finally took a good look at Dean, past the haze of seeing him for the first time in, what, two years? He was wet and dirty and bloody and, despite his ability to speak almost without slurring, undeniably drunk.

“Did you get beat up before or after getting drunk?” he asked, helping Dean to take his jacket off. It was hard to say if there was any blood on him because of the dark shirt, but he moved likes he was in pain. Sam maneuvered him to his own bed, not without some complaining from Dean.

“Hell if I know,” Dean answered, his words slower now that he was not putting up a front. Even his grin was bloody. Sam carefully pulled his shirt up and started feeling his ribs to assess the damage. “Ouch.”

“Sorry. That’s some impressive bruising but I don’t think there’s anything broken,” he started getting up but Dean held his arm. “I’m just gonna get the first aid kit,” he tried to assure him.

“There was a hunt nearby,” he explained, not letting go of Sam’s arm. He had known it was not a complete sentence, could tell by the way Dean hesitated around it. Despite his conditions, his eyes were alert and fixed on Sam. “I, uh. I wanted to see you.”

**.x.**

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam calls, with as much annoyance as he can muster at such unholy hour. “Shut that thing off, for fuck’s sake.”

Sam waits a whole minute without an answer before he finally opens his eyes and reaches clumsily for the goddamn alarm clock that was blasting a hard rock station louder than a newborn’s cry. Sam is not on the greatest mood, and he’s about to make Dean aware of it when he turns to his bed and notices the blatant absence of a person lying there. He lets himself sink into the bed again and checks the hour on the clock he hadn’t bother to take off his wrist last night; it was barely six, too early for Dean to go get breakfast. Sighing with resignation, Sam gets off the bed and takes a look at the parking lot of the motel.

He wouldn’t know how to explain it later, but seeing the Impala parked exactly where they had left it the last night is what makes his stomach sink. There is no logical reason for it yet; Sam hasn’t checked the bathroom yet, nor the corridors or the bar near the motel, though the latter would hardly be open at that hour anyway. But the feeling is still there, as if it is the visual confirmation of something terrible.

He checks the bathroom and every other corner of the room, even under the beds. When he is convinced that Dean can’t be hiding anywhere inside, Sam stops short in the middle of the room and breathes. It is all he can do now that he lets sink in the fact that none of Dean’s things are in the room as well. Not his bag, or any of his clothes or jewelry he could have taken off last night before sleep. Not a single thing. But the Impala was still outside, and Sam’s stomach does a full backflip now, because it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Dean leave the car? Hell, why would him _leave_ in the first place?

Yeah, okay, maybe he _would_ leave; has been full of reason to do so in the past couple days. Still, Sam would expect him to be at a bar, or anywhere nearby; where he may as well still be, actually, if it wasn’t for that feeling in Sam’s gut that Dean was really _gone_. Even the salt lines on the door and window are untouched.

Sam puts on the pants he had left on the chair and leaves to the corridors, ear glued to the doors the most discreetly he can be, all for nothing. He paces around the motel, watches the corners of the streets, checks inside the car. Nothing. On the way back, he stops at the front desk.

“Excuse me,” he says. “Have you seen the guy that checked in with me last night?”

The woman reluctantly takes her eyes away from her magazine and adjusts her glasses, taking a look over Sam as if she is trying to remember him.

“Black car?” she asks as way of confirmation. Sam nods. “I don’t know what you’ve been drinking, honey, but as far as I know you came alone.”

“I... what?”

She sighs and hides herself behind the magazine again, leaving Sam gaping there like a goddamn fish. She must have mistaken him for another person, Sam tries to rationalize as he makes his way back to the room. Sitting on the bed again, he goes over a list in his head for the hundredth time that morning. Dean is anywhere to be found. His cell phone doesn’t even have a signal. Worse, there is nothing around him that can even indicate that Dean had been there at all. There are no signs of struggle on the room -- Sam would have to have listened to something, right? -- or on the proximity of the motel.

It all just doesn’t make any sense.

Sam grabs his phone again before he starts getting out of control. There isn’t a lot that Bobby could do about this right now with so many miles between them, but he would be at least a familiar voice. He could be worried with him.

“Bobby, hey,” he picks up on the fifth tone. Sam draws in a deep breath before continuing. “Look, there’s something weird going on here. Has Dean called you or something?”

There is silence on the line for a while, enough for Sam to start worrying even more, then a long exhale. “You been drinking again, kid?”

“I… what?”

Sam had had that exact same conversation only a couple of minutes earlier and it is starting to get not only annoying, but downright weird.

“How far you are from here?” Bobby continues, as if Sam isn’t on the verge of a full on freak out. “Why don’t you come here for a while, give your head some rest.”

“What’re you talking about, Bobby, I need to find Dean. I don’t know where he is, he just… vanished and you’re not exactly helping me right now.”

“He’s on the same place he’s ever been, Sam,” Bobby says in a tone that would have Sam believe he had to repeat the same information a thousand times. He gets up of the bed in anticipation. “Lawrence’s cemetery.”

**.x.**

Sam knows he is holding the wheel too tight, but if he doesn’t he is sure his hands will start shaking. He feels like if he moves an inch too suddenly it will all fall apart and he won’t know how to pick up the pieces to start again. It is okay. He’s driving to Sioux Falls. He’s going to get Bobby to explain it to him. It’s going to be okay.

He had been reluctant to leave the motel, let alone the town, hoping that Dean would come back sooner or later. Not even twelve hours had passed since he supposedly went missing, but Sam already have that dread in him since the first moment he noticed something was off. He knew somehow that Dean wasn’t going to come back easily. He needed to know now if he was going to come back at all.

He doesn’t really counts how long it takes to get there, but they hadn’t been too far from Bobby’s. It was him who had pointed them the hunt after all. A wendigo, simple, easy, something that shouldn’t have sent Sam hurrying back to his porch with half of him missing.

“Hey,” he greets as warmly as he can, which probably isn’t warm at all, when Bobby opens the door. He pats Sam on the back and brings him inside, a look of concern in his face that only increases Sam’s restlessness.

”You look like shit, son,” he says, not without affection.

“I’m not really sure I know what’s going on,” Sam starts, sitting on the couch and holding the beer Bobby gives him mostly just to have something to do with his hands. “I just woke up this morning and Dean had disappeared, all his things gone, and he left the Impala behind. I don’t know what could’ve taken him. And then you say he’s in _Lawrence_? What the hell, Bobby?”

“Sam,” he says, passing his hand on his face. “Dean died on the fire, he and your mom. You know that, right?”

“No, he didn’t,” Sam laughs, not a hint of humor in it. “I just need to find my brother and--”

“You don’t _have_ a brother, Sam. You haven’t for a long time.”

Sam just stares at Bobby for what seems like an eternity, at a loss of what to do next. Until this moment he had at least known that he hadn’t been dreaming, now he’s not so sure anymore. He looks around just to have something to do with himself and it’s the feeling from when he had been at the motel all over again. Everything looks the same, except that it feels like something is missing. That something seems to be the fact that Dean exists.

He still feels lost, but now he’s also cornered. Bobby might as well not even be himself, but he seems to pick up on Sam’s string of thought just enough to be annoyed.

“Every damn time,” he sighs, getting his pocket knife. Sam nearly jumps off the couch when he sees the movement, but Bobby simply uses it to make a small cut on his forearm. “See? No smoke or anything. Do we need to go through the holy water?”

Bobby, Sam concludes after he’s satisfied with the usual tests, isn’t a demon, or a shapeshifter, or a monster of any other known kind. Although that certainly is good, it still doesn’t explain how he could’ve had Dean completely wiped off his memory. Every time Sam tries to insist on his story, it only makes Bobby become more condescending toward him, which only makes Sam more frustrated, which can only end on a full blow up that would only serve as a confirmation of his supposed confused mind.

Sam ends up asking to rest for a while, but when he gets to the spare room he only as much as paces around it. He throws all the contents of his duffel on the bed, searching for something that can prove that Dean isn’t a figment of his imagination. Strangely enough, their dad’s journal is there even though Sam has no memory of it ever being any place other than Dean’s bag. He flips through the pages, sure that there must be some photographs there.

They fall into Sam’s lap and only then Sam notices how hard he’s been breathing. He had never in his life even considered the possibility of Dean not _being_ ; he might not be _with_ him, but he still was somewhere, and it was a relief to finally hold in his hands the proof that Dean had in fact walked the earth. After that brief moment, though, Sam inspects the pictures more thoroughly. He’s sure they have pictures of them in Bobby’s house, even one or two from before Stanford, but they aren’t there with the others. If it was any other day, Sam would only come to the most obvious conclusion that the pictures simply were somewhere else, but that didn’t seem to be how things were working for him today.

All the pictures had been taken in their home at Lawrence. Sam is in two of them as a baby, and in all of them Dean can’t be more than four years old. Something is so out of place that Sam feels like someone shook the world while he was sleeping. He shakes the journal above the bed and other papers fell from it, along with a couple other recent pictures.

Sam knows when those were taken. He remembers when Bobby had taken some in the yard once and the one the photographer girl in Nevada they helped months ago took, but Dean was with him then and on those pictures there is only Sam. Alone.

“Cas,” he finds himself saying. “Castiel, please.”

“What’s wrong?” Cas says from behind him, a second after the woosh that announces his appearance.

“For a moment I thought you didn’t exist here too,” Sam says, closing his eyes for a moment. He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or more scared at how everything seems to be working exactly as it should, except without Dean in the great scheme of things. Trying to get himself on track again, Sam shows Cas one of the pictures of Dean. “You know him, right?”

“Your brother, yes,” Cas answers, a little suspicious.

“You’re gonna tell me he’s dead too?”

“I… Yes, he’s been dead for a long time. Sam, what’s wrong?” Cas asks again, unsure.

“Cas… Listen,” Sam starts, doing the best he can to hold himself together. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I woke up this morning and Dean had just vanished. No, don’t tell me he’s dead again, let me finish. Dean didn’t die in the fire, he was alive just yesterday, he was with me, we were hunting together and we went to sleep and now he’s gone. I don’t know if this is a dream, or another reality, or anything, but I promise you I’m not insane. He was with me, Cas.”

Cas doesn’t say anything immediately. Sam’s afraid he will start looking at him like Bobby had, and then he will be alone on this, but Cas seems to be evaluating his story rather than completely dismissing it.

“It’s happened before,” Sam continues, anger bubbling up again the longer he waits for an answer. “The Trickster, the djinn, the angels. It’s not impossible that this is some sort of alternate reality, is it?”

“It is quite possible,” Cas says, measuring his words, and Sam lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. He takes a sit near Sam. “There are creatures that can warp reality at their command, if that is the case. Gabriel is dead, though.”

“And if it was some kind of reverse djinn, you should be contributing to the fantasy, not… believing me. You do believe me, right?”

“I don’t think you’re lying,” Cas concedes. “And I don’t think you’re delusional either, so it must be true.”

“Okay. Okay, this is good. Uh, angels? They’ve done this before, but I don’t see why they’d do it now or why you would be changed too. And...“ Sam tries to wrap his mind around the idea. “If this is somehow a double of everything, there shouldn’t be another version of me around?”

“Possibly. I don’t know. You might have switched places with him, or substituted him altogether. What exactly happened last night?”

Sam takes some time to answer. Dean might have been left with a copy of Sam that never knew him right now or, worse, he could be alone. He would think Sam left again. Or was he some place else where Sam never existed either?

“We hunted a wendigo. We went back to the motel, then went to sleep. Nothing extraordinary. I woke up in the morning with the radio alarm and noticed he wasn’t there. I looked everywhere, then I came here. There was nothing strange, Cas, he… he was gone while I was sleeping. If someone took him… I didn’t even see it,” he says, staring at the comforter of the bed. “You’re going to help me?” he finally asks, turning to look at Cas again.

Cas doesn’t answer immediately; he still looks a little skeptic, but Sam can’t really blame him, can he?

“Where do we start?” he says then, and Sam smiles for what feels like the first time that day.

**.x.**

Cas shifts beside him on the passenger seat, still not all convinced that it wouldn’t be better to just zap to wherever they are going. The thing is, Sam explained, they don’t really know where they are going and driving would be just fine. Besides, he is not the biggest fan of popping in and out of places anyway.

They had left Bobby’s place just a while ago; Sam had left him still not so sure that he was completely fine, but that would have to do. He didn’t think the man would be as willing to believe him as Cas had been.

“Hey, Cas. How did we stop the apocalypse?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, without Dean. How did I fight Lucifer if he wasn’t there?”

As the initial haze of _my brother just fucking disappeared_ starts to fade, Sam starts to pick up details that he hadn’t given much thought before. That had been bugging him since they left.

“You never even met Lucifer, Sam,” Cas says, as if it is obvious. “He wasn’t freed. Lilith was taken down before that. It wasn’t easy to bring you back from the demon blood, though.”

Sam tightens his grip on the wheel and doesn’t dare to take his eyes off the road. In this reality, Lucifer never left his cage. That meant Sam -- whatever version of Sam who must have existed there before he arrived -- never went to Hell. He probably never had been soulless either.

“Did I… Uh, this Sam you know. Did he went to college?”

Cas’ squint probably means “your questions keep getting weirder.”

“No.”

“So I never met Jess?”

“I don’t know who’s supposed to be Jess.”

**.x.**

Jess never died. Dean and him never went to Hell. Lucifer wasn’t freed.

Sam plays it over and over in his head while he stares at the ceiling. They had come back to the motel, had looked again for any missed details, but there had been nothing that could indicate any sort of supernatural creature being there to take Dean away. Cas had convinced him to sleep for a few hours and left again to Heaven, to do whatever he had to do there, but Sam wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep his promise and rest.

Finally giving up, Sam picks up the journal to flip through the pages again. He had never made a habit of reading it, but he had seen Dean leaning over it at late hours plenty of times. If he had been just researching or actually reading the entries, Sam never knew. He turns on the bedside lamp and adjusts himself in bed to read it, looking at the beginning for some moment around the time right after the fire. The feeling isn’t all that different from preparing to take a punch.

There weren’t any drawing of monsters still for a few months; that was probably the beginning of John’s journey on finding out about them. There were some short paragraphs and lots of skipped days; Sam wouldn’t have thought of John as the writing type if he hadn’t seen him scrunched over the journal himself, and yet he had in is hands somewhat detailed records of most part of their lives.

February 1984. _burned Dean’s bones tonight. had I at least known about ghosts before, i’d have him cremated and never’d have to do this. there was still some flesh_

Sam looks away to the corner of the page, shuts his eyes tight a couple times before he keeps going.

_there was still some flesh on him, but i would rather see only his bones than remember the kid like that. Jim offered to do the burning but I’m the one who should do it, so I did._

Sam throws the journal at the foot of the bed. He feels sick from this glimpse of a life he hadn’t known, from a brother he never lost but was missing nonetheless, from the very thought of being stuck somewhere where he couldn’t save him. They had never gone to Hell, but at what price?

Does the other Sam miss Dean? He can’t stop thinking about it even when everything else fades, just can’t wrap his head around it. Does he miss him just like Sam himself misses his mother? Like someone he never met, someone he doesn’t remember, someone he never had a life with. He couldn’t imagine that the same way one isn’t aware of breathing all the time; but when they are, then it becomes so obvious. For Sam, the pain of not having Dean drills a hole on him, as if he hadn’t been missing for a day but for twenty-eight years.

“You didn’t rest,” says a voice from the corner of the room and Sam jumps off his thoughts.

“Couldn’t you knock?” he asks, not really expecting an answer. Drowning in his thoughts wouldn’t help Dean. Sam needs to start treating it more like a case or else they won’t get anywhere.

Under Cas slightly curious gaze, Sam leans against the wall and opens his laptop. They have work to do.

**.x.**

“Tell me more about him.”

Sam looks at Cas from the corner of his eye. He opens his mouth once or twice, unsure of where to begin. They are driving to Oklahoma, where Sam had picked up some news that resembled djinns attacks. It was at least somewhere to start.

“You saved him. He went to Hell and you pulled him out.”

“Why he went to Hell?”

“He made a deal, when I died. Did I die in Roanoke?” he adds.

“Yes, but your father made the deal.”

So Dad had been still alive by then; he hadn’t had to make the deal for Dean. Sam adjusts the pieces in his head, assembling the puzzle formed by all the possibilities of such a different life.

“This is crazy, you know,” he says, the rest of the words hanging in the air as he can’t muster the energy to talk. Four days had passed already; four days and not a single clue of Dean, and Sam is not even a little bit closer to process the fact that, for all that matters, his brother doesn’t even exist.

“He does exist” Cas says, fishing Sam out of his thoughts. They would have to have some serious talk about mentioning his thoughts casually into conversation like that. “Maybe not in this reality, but Dean Winchester does exist in you.”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

**.x.**

“So… you’re saying this has been already, uh… taken care of?”

Mrs. Robinson finishes serving them tea and smiles tightly. “We had problems with a poltergeist before.”

“We?”

“My husband and I. He passed away last year,” she explains, tilting her head in the direction of a photograph in the wall. “The hunters helped us back then, so yes, I know these things… exist.”

Sam nods. Mrs. Robinson had deconstructed his act five minutes into their conversation, so he relaxes a little now that he doesn’t have to tiptoe around the subject. Cas is dead silent at his side; he would have to tell him to at least pretend to be drinking what people offer them in their houses, you know, just for good measure.

“Well, Mrs. Robinson, to be honest, we were expecting to find a hunt here. Did the hunters explain what caught you?”

“Yes, it was a… a djinn. It’s dead now, anyway.”

“Okay. Uh… I know you wouldn’t want to talk about this now, but we are looking for my brother. And maybe you can help us if you could tell us what happened.”

“There’s not much to tell, really,” she says, putting the cup back in the coffee table. “I didn’t know it was a dream, it didn’t look like one. Well, not until it turned into a nightmare.”

“What do you mean?”

“The dream, it gave me my husband back, but he was different. After a while, he… He was a terrible person. You have to understand, Jack wasn’t like this in reality, but there… After some time I kinda wished that Jack was dead.”

“So the fantasy didn’t hold.”

“No. Then the hunters found me, and they killed the thing. Has your brother been taken too?”

“I’m not sure yet. We’re just considering the possibilities.”

“I hope you find him,” she says, taking the half drank cups back to the kitchen. Sam and Cas exchange a look.

**.x.**

“Could it really be a malfunctioning djinn?” Sam wonders aloud when they get back to the car.

“It could, but it can also be a coincidence,” Cas says.

“That’s what I think. I mean… it’s too convenient. Not to mention that the djinn is dead, it’s too much meta even for a time-warping creature,” Cas side-eyes him. “I was thinking about literal alternate universes. They, they must have overlapped, I don’t know. _I don’t know_.”

“We’re going to find him, Sam,” he hears Cas say at his side. He’s looking straight forward to Mrs. Robinson garden, a sting in the back of his eyes telling him to not dare to blink right now.

Get your head in the game, Dean would have said, or maybe not, but Sam doesn’t have the luxury to find out. Get your head in the game.

He starts the car.

**.x.**

The djnn theory doesn’t make sense anymore, and yet Sam can’t make himself sleep. He’s starting to know a lot more about motels’ ceilings than he wished to. If it wasn’t so difficult to believe, Sam could consider the malfunctioning djinn; he can’t deny that what he most wanted in life is to not have it so royally fucked up in every possible way. Maybe to fix all of it the djinn went overhead and it backfired with the non-existence of Dean. All that Sam knows is that this never would be something he would voluntarily wish for, and that he wasn’t even a little bit closer to find Dean than he was in the beginning.

“What if the problem is me?”

“How so?” Cas asks from the chair in the corner where he hadn’t been just a second ago.

“What if… Dean doesn’t really exist and these are all implanted memories?”

“And what would be the point of it?”

“I don’t know. Torture, maybe? I don’t know.”

“You don’t really believe this.” God bless him for answering to every single theory Sam comes up with, even the most nonsense ones, with the same gravity. It makes Sam feel a little more grounded. 

“No, I don’t,” he says, pressing his eyes with the palm of his hands and focusing on the colors appearing behind his eyelids. “But I’d rather find out this is the problem than… than know that he’s somewhere out there where I can’t find him.”

“What would have Dean done if it was you who’d been missing?” Cas asks. _That_ was low.

“He’d have ripped the world apart at this point, probably,” Sam answers, a fond smile tugging at his lips.

“He sounds like a brave man.”

“He is. You’re friends, did you know that?”

“We are friends too,” Cas says. Sam can’t see him squint, but he knows he’s doing it. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah, but. I guess you guys were just closer than you and me.”

“I still don’t quite grasp human sentiments in their entirety. But I… care about you. It must run in the family then.”

Sam doesn’t know if Jimmy Novak had been a man of light steps but Cas certainly is. He can barely hear him stand up and come near the bed. Cas touches his forehead with two fingers, and Sam feels him tuck his hair back before finally falling asleep.  
.

**.x.**

Sam eventually manages to sleep most nights, but he stills wakes up as if something just scared him in his dreams. He doesn’t remember them, though; it’s like he just closed his eyes a second ago and then opened again, just long enough to feel like falling. The less he sleeps the longer he takes to actually get out of bed, the silence and emptiness of the room too overwhelming.

If Dean were here, he thinks, more often than it’s probably healthy at this point, he would be complaining about the diner’s bad fries. He would be making noise in the bathroom. He would be bumping shoulders while brushing his teeth. But he’s not there, haven’t been for a week now, and Sam’s losing the ability to pretend.

The whole situation is too much like what the Trickster had done to them all those years back. But then at least he had known Dean was dead, Sam thinks bitterly. He had been acting on a specific scenario where he knew what had happened to his brother. Now nothing that he and Cas do gives them a clue of what might have happened, and Sam can almost feel himself drifting away.

He’s not a hundred percent alone because Cas believes him, he knows he does, but Sam’s the one telling him stories about a friend Cas never met. He’s right; the memories live only in Sam, and he’s not sure if he can bear the entire existence of Dean in himself and not let it slip through his fingers.

If Sam had been able to tell it, that’s exactly what he would have said, though. Cas eventually spends more time in Heaven, and Sam can’t blame him. Dean eventually slips through his fingers and Sam has only a moment to beat himself up over letting it happen before he can’t even notice it anymore.

“Sam?”

Cas snaps his fingers in front of him and Sam takes a second to appreciate how human the gesture is before resuming what he was doing before. What was that? Oh right, drying his hair with the towel. He had taken a shower. He can’t remember a lot of what he’s been doing these days, and he’s not really sure why.

“Have you found anything new?” Cas asks, in a tone that suggests that he asks this so frequently it has almost lost its meaning. Sam can recognize some of what it could have meant, though; he hears it as if it is in the bottom of his words, some underlying information that he can’t quite catch up to, so he ends up shrugging and getting the newspaper from the coffee table.

“It looks like it could be witchcraft,” he says, handling Cas the page where he had seen the news. Cas takes the paper but just stares at him, confused.

“I meant about Dean,” he says, emphasizing the name. “Your brother.”

“What about him?”

“We are looking for him,” Cas explains slowly and looking at him right in the eye, as if Sam isn’t getting what he is saying.

 _For who_ , Sam asks himself, unable to get a grasp on his thoughts. He knows, in some deep, weird level, that something is missing; the very lack of it is almost a presence now, a response he doesn’t get in the morning, steps he doesn’t hear in the kitchenette, a song that’s not playing, like the missing weight to set his equilibrium in place. He turns around quickly sometimes, tries to catch whatever absence it is that seems to have settled on his back, at the corner of his eyes, that seems to have its own weight on his back. He own personal burden to put alongside the others.

A ghost, maybe? He’s considered it a couple times. Maybe he’s haunted. He certainly does feel like a haunted house.

Then it hits him like a brick to the head.

“I… I forgot, I,” he stumbles around the words, disoriented, a bloody grin in his mind, a lifetime of lullabies making their way back. “I forgot him.”

He sits at the armchair on the corner of the room and stares at his hands. He had forgotten Dean. For the last few days he had completely, honestly forgot what he had been looking for this whole time. He had let him go.

Sam jolts to the bathroom barely in time to throw up in the toilet; he hadn’t eaten in forever and mostly dry heaves, his stomach turning into knots with the sickening revelation. Even now that he knows what he had forgotten he can’t really take a hold of it; it’s like the memories pass through his brain and he can’t catch the end of them, as if they are fading away and he isn’t strong enough to follow.

“Whatever it is that took him is affecting you too,” Cas says, and Sam didn’t know he had followed him to the bathroom, but his voice isn’t accusing and he holds Sam’s hair to keep it from getting in his face.

“I forgot him,” Sam repeats, almost without air as his stomach lurches again.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

**.x.**

Dean’s hand had travelled all the way up his to his neck, and Sam couldn’t help closing his eyes for the few seconds it stayed there. When he had opened them again Dean’s hand went a little further up his face, where his thumb swept over his bottom lip for a second or maybe less before Dean broke it all by patting his cheek twice.

“I’m fine, just have to sleep it off.”

“I’m gonna get you some painkillers.”

Sam had looked for the pills in a haze, not sure of how to feel about having Dean right there, only a few feet from him, after so long feeling like part of him was gone. He had so many things to say and to ask, but when he had gone back to give him the pills and a glass of water, Dean had been already knocked out.

Dean had woken up ridiculously early the next day, even though Sam had been already up for at least a couple hours before him; actually, he had barely slept. He had be in and out of sleep all night, fearing that Dean would get up and go away at any moment. Sam had stayed in their kitchen table after Dean asked where the bathroom was, tried not to watch him coming back from the shower in one of his towels, dripping water; tried to not watch as he unceremoniously took it off and stood naked in his room, to not stare at the new scars in his back, at the way he ruffled around Sam’s drawers till he finally settled down for a shirt to wear and some pants.

“You grew a lot,” he said, following the smell of coffee to the kitchen, the hair he hadn’t bothered to comb sticking in all directions.

“How’s dad?” Sam asks. Dean had taken all the time in the world to pour himself a mug of coffee and sit before answering.

“He’s hunting something somewhere or whatever.”

“You’ve been hunting _alone_?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Where’s your roommate anyway?”

Sam wouldn’t let him get away so easily with that, but had let it be for now.

“He went to a party last night, I called and asked him if he could stay somewhere else for today.”

“He’s gonna think you got a girl here,” Dean grinned, stuffing his mouth with the toast Sam had made.

Sam had laughed too, at ease. This was how things were like before, how they were supposed to be; Dean walking around his place as if it was his own, eating breakfast together, just existing at the same time and place, together. He had been even afraid of saying anything else, of breaking the illusion or, worse, of finding out when Dean was going to leave again.

He had to, though.

“You haven’t called in forever,” he said, triying to keep his voice even, not like an accusation or something.

“‘ve been busy,” Dean answered then, not looking at him.

“You’re still mad at me,” Sam said matter-of-factly.

Of course he was, what had Sam expected? Dean only confirmed his point by not saying anything else, and as predicted, some of the ease of that morning faded. One way or the other, they spent the most part of the day in _how are you_ and what _you’ve been doing_ , the answers increasingly more concerning depending on what they considered normal; Sam was still shocked to know Dean had been hunting alone, probably as much as Dean was at the fact that Sam owned a Stanford hoodie.

“What’s next, you’re a frat douche too?”

Dean hadn’t mentioned once when he was going to leave and Sam hadn’t have the guts to ask him yet. It had been almost night when they settled in Sam’s bed to watch a movie; there wasn’t a lot of space there, but they made it work.

The lights were off and Sam’s laptop was challenging his patience, so he hadn’t noticed Dean looking at him immediately. But he was, in that intense way he did sometimes; it didn’t make Sam uncomfortable, but rather waiting for something to come, something he didn’t know what was.

Dean answered his expectation by kissing him.

**.x.**

It doesn’t get any better than that.

The more Sam tries to hold on to the few memories he seems to have been left with, the more they slip away. He ends up hunting what ended up being a vengeful spirit alone, goes back to the motel, hits the road again, all the while knowing that there is something missing in the big picture but not able to pinpoint exactly what it is. Cas shows up every once in a while, asks him weird questions, and generally just stands there in the corner, staring at him as if something is wrong. He doesn’t know if there is something to be worried about, but God does he worry anyway.

“Why’re you staring at me?” he asks lightly when Cas comes along to prospect a possible hunt. Cas sighs and turns to look at the road ahead. Sam can see him shaking his head in his peripheral view.

“You’re different,” it’s all he gives him. It’s almost like Cas is mad at him, and Sam has no idea why he would be so.

“Different from what?”

“Don’t you miss your brother?” Cas tone is weird, to say the least. Sam opens his mouth to answer but realizes he doesn’t know exactly what he would say. “Don’t you _remember_ him?”

“I don’t know why you’re-- _No_ , we never really…” he was just a baby, he couldn’t have remembered Dean, or their mother, no matter how much he might have wanted to. “We never really met,” he says, but it sounds more like a question to him. Have they not met, really? Sam wished he could have something to relate to John other than hunting; a family he could remember, memories that they could have shared, not just the casualty of the fact that they ended up together as the remaining ones. 

No, they have not met. Had they not? Sam’s not so sure anymore as he follows the road; could have Sam imagined a brother that never existed, someone that did grow up with him, laughed with him, even argued with him?

Sam can’t answer his own questions and they just end up going to the same fog where his memories seem to have got messed up. Cas is staring again, but he is not angry; he is sad, and Sam is too, but he doesn’t know why yet.

He doesn’t know anymore.

**.x.**

It’s probably because of all of that that when Sam wakes up one day to a mischievous face right above him, his first reaction is to try to kill it.

“Whoa, easy tiger,” the man says, getting away from him when Sam manages to get the knife from under his pillow. It strikes a chord in Sam, God knows why, but he doesn’t waver as he gets up and circles the guy.

Sam doesn’t know if he’s copying his moves or if they just move too similarly, but something about the stranger weirds him out. He has this smug smile plastered on his face as if he knows something Sam doesn’t.

“How did you get in here?”

“What, like it’s hard?” he rolls his eyes, and turns his back to Sam, _turns his back_ , as if he wasn’t even a little bit fazed by the fact that Sam could take that chance to take him down.

Well, Sam really doesn’t.

“So that’s what you’ve been doing without me? Moping around?” the guy says, kicking the sad pile of beer bottles Sam had let accumulating on the floor. 

“What are you talking about?”

“Sammy? C’mon, drop the act,” he says, the smile faltering a little. Sam doesn’t like the way he says his name. In fact, he doesn’t like a lot about this guy, especially when he gets on his space like that. He’s approaching and Sam holds up the knife and oh.

Oh God.

His head hurts, it honestly _hurts_ , and he hears the faint sound of the knife falling to the floor when he cover his ears with both hands. Sam knocks down the things from the bedside table as he uses it to steady himself, half sitting on it, half letting himself fall.

Dean. Dean. He had been looking for Dean. Dean, that had been taken away from Sam. And he had forgotten him, and then remembered him, and then forgotten again. Dean didn’t die when he was four years old; he is right in front of him, apparently unfazed by Sam’s attack and waiting for it to be over soon.

“Dean,” Sam says, and saying it out loud is like making it real. He gets on his feet, not without some difficulty, and walks up to him.

Dean is not smiling anymore, but he looks at Sam so intensely that Sam can’t shake the feeling that there is something behind it. He has his hands on his jacket pockets and keeps them there when Sam hugs him.

Sam doesn’t care; not right now. His head still hurts, as if the memories had been beaten into it in a bolt of lightning. He just holds Dean tighter, afraid that he will slip away from him again and he will not find him anymore.

“Where have you been?”

“Around,” he answers, sitting on the bed. “You’re gonna explain what this is all about or what?”

“I’m not sure enough to tell you.”

**.x.**

Cas arrives at the diner, blissfully on foot, when Dean is on his second burger. Sam had ordered one for himself but is mostly staring at Dean, trying to figure out what exactly he had missed this whole time. He is aware that it is his brother, but even this recognition is cloudy.

“You must be Dean,” Cas says, sitting beside Sam. Dean looks at each one of them at a time and puts the burger down.

“You two are freaking me out.”

“I told you it was complicated. This is like an alternate reality where you simply doesn’t exist,” Sam explains. Cas hasn’t finished just staring at Dean yet. “But you haven’t explained yet how you just reappeared as suddenly as you disappeared.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he says, concentrating on chewing the burger again. “I remember being at the motel with you, then nothing, then I’m here again. That’s pretty much it.”

“But you came here driving,” Sam points out.

“Yes and no. I was driving, but not to this place in particular. I just ended up at the motel and knew you were there.”

There is something about this story that doesn’t sit quite right with Sam -- aside from the fact that the situation as a whole is absurd -- but he stops asking questions for a while. For now, having Dean back is good enough and they can figure the rest out later.

It doesn’t go quite like he expects, though.

Dean is there, that is the undeniable fact. Sam had thought that fact alone would solve all the problems that had come with his disappearance, but it turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg; he and Cas still spend a good part of their time trying to figure out from where and how Dean had reappeared out of the blue like that, but Dean himself doesn’t seem too concerned about the issue.

“Sometimes it’s like he’s not really here, you know?” Sam tells Cas some other night, while Dean’s once again hitting some bar for what looks like the whole night. “No, I know he’s not here,” he clarifies. “What I mean is that even seeing him right in front of me it’s like there’s still some part of me that misses him, like he hasn’t come back yet.”

Cas nods, understanding, and he seems to be taking something into consideration.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. Sam doesn’t need to ask him to continue. “Maybe your soul still misses his.”

“My soul? But that would mean he… doesn’t have one now?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t. Dean’s soul went to Heaven when he died as a child.”

“And it might still be there, while the Dean who’s here now doesn’t… Jesus, Cas, can’t we have a break?” Sam passes his hands through his hair, exasperated.

“There is a way to be sure.”

“You mean what you did to me when I didn’t have a soul? That’s cruel,” Sam says, but it’s Cas who flinches at the memory.

“I know it is, but without it we’ll be only guessing. And if Dean doesn’t really have a soul now, then the problem is much worse than it seemed before.”

Sam knows Cas is right, but he doesn’t like it anyway. They wait for Dean together the whole night, but he only comes back to the room when the sun is already rising; Sam wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if he wanted to. Dean shoots him and Cas a suspicious look and slows down his pace.

“Intervention?”

“You can call it so,” Sam says. “Dean, when was the last time you slept?”

“What the fuck, Sam. Look, I’m not even drunk.”

“Yeah. You’re not even drunk,” Sam repeats, realizing it. Dean smells like beer and smoke but seems just as awake as he had been in the morning.

“What is this all about, Sam?”

“What are you _feeling_?”

“Well, right now I’m pissed, that’s what I’m feeling,” he says, that intense gaze fixed on Sam betraying the growing anger in his voice.

“Dean, we believe that you might have come back without a soul,” Cas explains.

“This is an intervention then…” he starts saying but Sam interrupts him.

“We just want to be sure. Cas can check if you have your soul, and if you haven’t… We have to know so we can fix it.

“Fix it?” Dean repeats, a glint of disbelief in his eyes. “There’s nothing here to be fixed, I’m pretty good, thanks.”

“Dean… I know, okay? Better than you think,” Sam appeals, approaching Dean carefully as if he was a skittish animal. “If you really don’t have a soul then you’re not feeling anything. And I know what is like to not want to have it back.”

Dean doesn’t seem any more at ease with any of this yet but at least he’s not backing off to the door again.

“We just want to be sure,” Sam repeats, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“If that makes you both less of a pain in the ass.”

It’s not a pretty thing to see, that’s for sure, but it’s certainly even worse for the receiving end. Dean is lying on the bed when Cas sticks his hand into his chest and Sam is at the head of the bed, holding the belt in Dean’s mouth. Sam would be more concerned about people next door hearing the screams if he wasn’t mortified enough to see this horror spectacle first hand.

It feels like an eternity before Cas finally finishes reading Dean’s soul, or the absence of it, and Dean first arches off the bed before flopping on it again, drained.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks. Dean looks at him like he is one step short of biting his head off.

“His soul’s really gone,” Cas announces gravely. Sam had been expecting to hear that, with all the signs they had been having since Dean came back, but it still hits him hard.

“Oopsie,” Dean says. He’s still out of breath but that smile is on his face again and now Sam understands why he was so weirded out by it.

“Did you _know_ that?”

“Not really, but it makes sense. Figured some weird shit had happened, but hey, thanks for explaining. Except for the deep touching.”

Dean gets up and walks past them, but Sam holds him by the arm. He doesn’t like it.

“You got what you wanted already,” he says slowly. “So get the fuck off me.”

“We’re not finished here,” Sam says. His grip doesn’t tighten; he doesn’t want to threaten him, just hold him there a little more. To be honest, he is starting to fear that once Dean is not in his sight anymore, he won’t want to get back again.

“It might have been a glitch,” Cas starts explaining, cautiously. It works to distract Dean at least.

“What do you mean?”

“If you were thrown in a reality where Dean doesn’t exist, then him being here is not a natural event either. It’s messing with how things are supposed to be.”

“So basically we’re both on the wrong place?”

“Basically, yes.”

“So if we somehow get back to our reality he gets his soul back?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you done talking about me?” Dean asks.

**.x.**

“Aren’t you even a little bit worried about all this?” Sam asks, a map on his lap though they don’t really need it to navigate those roads. Dean doesn’t answer immediately, but he doesn’t turn the music up either so Sam counts that as a semi victory.

“Last time I checked we didn’t have any problems. ‘cept, you know, the whole Cas has never met me before thing, but he can deal with it.”

“Dean, you don’t have a soul. How can this not bother you?”

“Look, I get it, okay? Soulless you was a dick. Do I look like a dick right now?”

“Well--”

He does turn up the volume now and Sam can’t do much more than look ahead and sigh. He’s no longer feeling like his memories are being pushed out of him; being around Dean might be what is preventing them to fade away but, as everything else on that matter, that is just a theory.

They get to a motel on the side of the road just to spend the night before they get to the next city, and Sam watches Dean throw his stuff on the bed and walk to the bathroom. He doesn’t look so different, but Sam can feel it, as if someone had shift what makes Dean himself just a little to the side and came up with a whole new thing that only looks exactly like him.

Dean comes back from the bathroom when Sam is taking his boots off and fishes an old shirt from his bag. Sam can’t deny it; he seems more relaxed, a lifetime of worry and battle off his shoulders. He somehow also looks more distant.

“How does it feel?” he asks when he lies down and turns the lights off, hoping for the best. Dean hadn’t been always one for talk, with or without a soul, but if Sam’s lucky he’d indulge him some sincerity in the middle of the night.

Dean looks at him that way that Sam wouldn’t want to admit that makes him nervous, a bit too intense for his liking, but not like the intensity he’s used to; not like the Dean he’s used to. This one seems to look at him at times more like Sam is a prey, and at times more like he’s nothing to him, and nothing weirds Sam out more than that.

“I told you. It doesn’t feel like anything, so it’s obviously better than feel all that crap all the time. Kinda get it now why your buddy didn’t want his soul back.”

He brings some guns to the bed and just stays there, cleaning them on the side more illuminated by the bedside lamp. Looking at him like this, Sam can almost pretend nothing has changed and that is just some other night in the road. What would he give to have that again now.

“You could drive the whole night,” he says. “You don’t really need to sleep.”

“You do, princess.”

“Speaking of what, why do you eat, anyway?”

“‘Cause I _want_ to?” Dean says, as if it is the most obvious thing. “Now shut up and do your beauty sleep or I’ll regret that too.”

Sam doesn’t sleep immediately; he’s thinking too much to be able to. Dean didn’t need to go back to him. He might have been thrown in the same place Sam was but that didn’t mean he’d have to stick around.

And yet he did.

Sam winces a little as he turns to his other side; the werewolf they had hunt the night before had thrown him against a tree and his shoulder was not so happy about it.

“You hurt?” Dean asks behind him.

“No,” Sam grunts, but it’s too late. Dean’s already beside him, turning him over none too gently.

“Take it off,” he says, pointing to his shirt. When Sam doesn’t move a finger to obey he starts doing it himself.

“Okay, okay, fuck off.”

His shoulder is bruised but it’s not broken nor dislocated, so that’s as good as it’s going to get. Dean inspects it for a while, then goes for the first aid kit to come back to spray Sam’s shoulder with anti-inflammatory. Sam can’t say he is not grateful for the feeling of his shoulder hurting a little less, but being that close of that Dean is still too weird for him to feel at ease. Dean seems to sense it and scoffs at him, goes back to his guns while Sam gets dressed again.

The hunt had been weird, to say the least. First of all, Sam hadn’t wanted to take it; he would rather pass it on to any other hunter nearby, but Dean insisted that he was just soulless, not incapacitated. Everything was fine till the moment of actually killing the thing, when Dean went overboard.

Sam doesn’t think a soulless person feels too intensely; in fact, they should feel nothing at all, but the concept itself is hard for him to grasp, even though he himself had gone through that once. That is why it is even stranger for him to see how Dean kills in his… condition. Maybe if he did the same while feeling anything, it would be less weird for him to watch than to see him killing a monster so precisely, so cold hearted, that it trips over the edge of the minimum needed and nearly goes all the way to a killing spree. It just doesn’t fit in his head how one thing can be related to the other.

For all Sam knows, having his back turned to Dean right now, he might as well kill him in his sleep with all the tranquility in the world; he just needs a reason, a perfectly logic reason to fit in his mind the need to kill Sam. Still, that is not what Sam is most afraid of; what he fears is the killing of Dean himself, is the possibility of the Dean he has always known not coming back. Not coming back to him.

He ends up sleeping in the midst of his thoughts, the clicks of the guns being dismounted and mounted again serving as the background noise to his nightmares. He wakes up in the middle of the night to find that Dean isn’t anywhere to be found, and is almost relieved.

**.x.**

Cas finds them when they’re wrapping up the second hunt in two weeks, all searching eyes and nervous tick of his hands as he storms into the parking lot.

“Where’s him?” he asks Sam because he sees him first, but Dean is not so far from them, putting their bags on the trunk, and Cas walks up to him.

Sam doesn’t know what exactly is going on, but he can get the idea; the way Cas is looking at Dean right now is not the way Sam himself had been doing for the past few days, which had been like he had been just a little bit curious about him. Now, however, there is some urgency in the way he stares, as if he’s looking for something only Dean can give him, only Dean can answer. Sam knows how it feels like, what is that flash of recognition in his eyes as he walks up him and hovers around, taking in the details he had forgotten for so long as if he could not believe he had really been able to forget in the first place.

“You remember him, don’t you?” Sam asks.

“Yes,” Cas answers, without taking his eyes off Dean, who hadn’t as much as spoken a word since he arrived and looked just slightly curious as to why Cas was looking at him so weirdly.

Cas approaches him slowly but surely; Dean makes a move when he pulls his right sleeve up, but doesn’t get away. Cas fits his hand where it’s imprinted in Dean’s arm, and he flinches as if he’d been burned.

“I remember you,” Cas says, letting go of the scar.

“That’s great,” Dean says, upset, pulling his sleeve down again. “Now stop the poking around, would ya?”

“What does it mean, Cas?” Sam asks. “The realities are merging?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, looking intently at his hand. “I think I know what could have happened here. Let’s go somewhere else.”

Sam doesn’t know what the suspense is all about, but he wants to shake Dean to make him care at least a little bit about his own situation. He drives them to a point further from the motel, somewhere they think no one will hear them, and Sam can barely contain his anxiety, whereas Dean just looks as bored as ever.

Once they get to a more isolated field and park the car there, Cas starts talking.

“There is a rumor in Heaven, about the nephilim.”

“The giants?” Dean asks.

“No, they’re not _giants_ ,” he explains. “That is just a common misconception. I myself haven’t really see one, though.”

“So, wait… We’re talking about hybrids, right? People born from angels and humans,” Sam intervenes.

“Yes. Most of them were eradicated during the Great Flood, but some were allowed to stay on Earth.”

“What they’ve been doing here since then?”

“They’ve become demons.”

“Demons? Aren’t they… angelical to some extent?”

“They’re the offspring of fallen angels who mated with _humans_ ,” Cas says, as if the answer contained in the sentence is obvious. “That is extremely forbidden.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks for the Sunday school moment, but what does that _mean_?” Dean asks. “Demons can’t do all the time warping shit you’ve been theorizing about.”

“Angels can,” Sam says. “They might not be angels now, but maybe they kept some of their abilities.”

“Nephilim are great illusionists,” Cas says, matter-of-factly, and they just stand there silent for a moment.

“Can this be just an illusion, then? Why would they do this?”

“I’m not sure if this _is_ an illusion, but it can be. Nephilim are not affiliated to Hell. God made them to serve a purpose of tempting humanity, keep things balanced, not necessarily _harm_ you.”

“Real nice of him,” Dean mutters.

“If one of them went astray…” he continues, side-eying Dean. “He can be messing up our perception of reality. _Why_ would he do that, I don’t know.”

“Does that mean Dean being soulless can be an illusion too?” Sam asks, hopeful.

“I don’t think so. Which is why we should find the nephilim and see if he has anything to do with this. If this is an illusion, it’s breaking apart. He might be hurt or incapacitated somehow.”

“Let’s get to work then.”

**.x.**

“When you said you had _found a place_ you didn’t say it was someone else’s place.”

“What did you expect?”

“ _Dean_.”

They had agreed to lay low for a while so they could do some research before actually hunting down the nephilim. For that they would have to stay at some place where they could have privacy, but Sam now realizes that leaving it on Dean’s hands wasn’t the best idea he could have had.

He had found them a cabin in the woods, but it wasn’t completely empty, although there were traces of people living there at some point.

“You think I’d want the risk of people getting here out of the blue?” Dean counters. “Look around, it hasn’t been inhabited for years. Patrons probably died or something.”

“ _Probably_ ,” Sam mutters under his breath, but lets his bag on the couch nonetheless. Much to Dean’s defense, the place is dusty enough to not have had visitors for a while. “Cas said he would meet us.”

“‘kay.”

“Dean…” Sam starts. Dean looks back at him, expecting. “Are you on board with this? Hunting the nephilim, I mean.”

“Got nothing better to do,” he says, playful smile quickly replaced by a more serious expression. “I’m not happy with… angels, demons or whoever is messing with me either. I say we hunt this thing down, and we do what we gotta do to fix this reality, but let’s get something clear here, Sammy,” his voice gets lower, more menacing. “When it comes to my soul, _I_ get to decide whether or not I’ll take it back. So be a smart guy and don’t get in the way. I came back once, might not be doing it a second time.”

They are so close to each other that Sam has a hard time to not simply shove him back; he knows he shouldn’t antagonize Dean right now, but God does he want to wipe that smile of his face.

“You’re not my brother,” Sam says instead, and it hurts, but it’s true. Dean only scoffs and Sam can swear his gaze drops to his mouth, lazy grin somehow magnified.

“Too bad I’m all that’s left then.”

For the sake of the integrity of Dean’s face, Sam turns to get his stuff from the couch, check the rooms, the water supply, anything; instead, he faces Cas. He doesn’t know how long he had been there watching them, but he is a welcome distraction.

“Cas, hey. What you’ve got?”

“Lore,” he answers, still glancing at Dean. Sam sits at the dusty sofa and Cas takes the seat near it, but Dean stays standing over them. “There was an initial set of angels who were supposed to watch the Earth.”

“Sentinels,” Dean provides.

“Yes. But they became corrupted. You already know that. Azazel was one of them.”

“Azazel? So this can be the work of his…”

“Of his offspring. It’s possible. There were many other fallen angels, but since Azazel is the one we know for sure has a connection with the Winchesters, it’s a good place as any to start looking.”

“You know what that means, right?” Dean says. “Meg’s Azazel daughter, she can know a thing or two about her brothers.”

**.x.**

Sam doesn’t know if what surprises him the most about the beer being offered to him is the fact that it’s Cas who is offering it, or the fact that the he is sitting beside him on the porch of the cabin. The night is chilly but not enough to keep him from being outside.

“Thanks, man,” he says, taking the bottle. “You don’t get one?”

“It doesn’t do much for me,” he shrugs.

They stay in silence for a while. Sam takes a sip of the beer and looks up; it is cloudy and there is too many branches obscuring the view of the sky.

“I wish we could see some stars here.”

“I can see them,” Cas says, looking thoughtfully at the sky. “How’s Dean?” he asks then. Sam sighs, an exhaustion he didn’t know he was feeling taking over him.

“He’s… you never know what he’s up to. These last hunts we’ve made, it’s almost like he’s killing for pleasure.”

“He’s indulging the limits a soul doesn’t break.”

“I guess. He’s awake in there,” Sam lets out a humorless laugh. “Kinda freaks me out, y’know?”

“We’re going to find his soul, Sam.”

“Yeah, well. He’s gonna put a hell of a fight to take it back.”

Cas doesn’t say anything. Sam tries to take in the moment as he finishes his beer, to pretend everything is fine just for a minute.

“It’s just..” he starts after a while, picking at the beer label. “It’s like it’s all my fault, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“This whole thing with Dean, I… The first thing I thought, that I still think sometimes, was that it happened because of… because of what we fought about right before he went missing,” Sam doesn’t really want to get into details about it with Cas, but if he doesn’t share even the littlest bit he feels like he’s going to explode.

Cas considers it for a moment long enough for Sam to start wondering if he really doesn't know the dirty details.

“I don’t think it was anything other than bad timing, if that helps.”

“It does,” Sam laughs. “I know it’s not rational or anything. Thanks for helping us,” he tells Cas, bumping his knee. “You believed me since the beginning, that mustn’t’ve been easy.”

“I’m glad to help,” he says, still staring at the sky. Sam never seems to be not amazed at the fact that Cas is such an ancient creature, and yet he still sticks around for such human affairs. In moments like these he almost seems like one of them, as amazed at the stars as any human.

“Did you see them being born?” Sam asks, staring at the sky too even though he can barely see anything.

“A couple, but they’re too young for their light to have reached us yet.”

“Sometimes I want to ask you more things about Heaven and the universe and everything else but I’m too scared of what I’m going to hear. It’s just… Too big to wrap around our minds.”

“You know what’s interesting?” Cas says. “Is that sometimes when you’re talking about yourself you use ‘us’.”

“I do?”

“Yes. Dean does it too. It’s like in one way or another you’re both always acknowledging how you’re part of each other’s life too. _That_ , to me, is too big to comprehend sometimes. The stars and the universe, they’re enormous, nearly endless. But they’re also very lonely, and so are the angels.”

“I thought Heaven was filled with love, or something like that.”

“It is, it’s just… not the same thing. Love, it gets different when you have such a limited existence like yours. When you live too long, when there is not an end to things, they just seem to stretch out and lose its meaning eventually. The way human love develops, though… That fascinates me.”

“Funny, isn’t it? How we both come from so different places and are amazed at things from both our worlds.”

“Yeah. You really are fascinating creatures. Don’t doubt that.”

**.x.**

It doesn't take more than a couple of days of trying - unsuccessfully - to get a hold of Meg for Dean to start disappearing again. Sam doesn't really care; maybe he would care even less if it wasn't for the underlying fear of him not coming back. Honestly, he is sick and tired of this feeling being so common to him that it is almost normal; he wonders vaguely if that is how Dean – the actual Dean – feels too, if he’s always on edge because of the possibility of Sam leaving again. It kind of put things in perspective.

Something always brings Dean back, though; Sam doesn't want to feed the idea that it’s him, doesn't think that has any possible way of ending right if he thinks that Dean feels anything other than basic instincts. He would rather believe it’s because of the convenience of it; having someone to do the research, to take care of their most basic affairs while he rolls around in the nest of blood and laziness he’s been building for himself. When he’s not hunting he’s partying, when he’s not partying he’s lazing around in the cabin, and Sam can barely take it anymore without exploding if Dean doesn’t go away every once in a while; he’s almost putting him out of the door himself.

He is trying to make the small television work on their sad excuse for a living room when Dean comes back from his latest errand; one could think he spends all night drinking when he goes out like this, but Sam knows better. He doesn't feel a thing, it's not like there's some heavy conscience urging him to get wasted to silence it anymore. What he does instead, though, Sam would rather not want to know.

"Waiting me up?" Dean says, making a beeline to the kitchen. Sam's back is turned to him, but he can hear Dean's grin in his voice as much as Dean can probably make a pretty good picture of Sam rolling his eyes.

"Not having a soul didn't affect at all your future in comedy, did it?"

Dean just slouches on the couch behind Sam, eyeing suspiciously his efforts with the anthem.

"That ain't gonna work."

"Do it yourself then."

Dean sighs dramatically but he does get up and kneels beside him, inspecting the work Sam had done so far and just generally shaking his head at it. He restarts the wiring and when it seems that it is going better than when Sam was doing it, Sam goes get a beer himself. He gets two out of the fridge out of habit, almost uncaps both before shrugging it off and leaving one on the floor next to Dean. He sits down on the couch to watch him work, grateful for the blessed longest period of silence they have had so far since Dean had got back. He should probably work on finding him other old electronics to fix, keep his mind fixed on one thing only so he can keep his mouth shut and his hands busy.

"You can watch Oprah now," Dean finishes annoyingly quickly, taking the beer next to him.

"You loved Oprah."

Dean sits beside him while he flips through the channels to test if won’t explode, and it’s almost like nothing has changed. Dean grunts at everything Sam pays more than two seconds of his attention to, till they settle for some random western. They watch it for all of ten minutes before Sam notices Dean is not looking at the TV.

"You're freaking me out," Sam says, not taking his eyes off it. Dean huffs a laugh and just scoots closer, of course he does. Had it been another time, another life even, Sam could have considered enjoying the moment, but as it is that isn't an option.

"Wouldn't you give anything for him to look at you like this?" Dean all but whispers, dangerously close to his ear; Dean's recently fallen into a yet new annoying habit of referring to himself in third person when talking about his soulful counterpart.

Sam turns to him because what else can he do, really. Dean is only partially right, and that's what Sam intends to tell him. Sam does feel Dean's eyes on him, had since before that night in Stanford and even more so after they had started hunting together; the difference is that it was the kind of thing that disappears once you turn around, hidden behind deflected glances and guilt, not the open, unashamed way Dean's absence of a soul allows him to do.

"Is that why you stuck with me, to lurk around?"

"Thought you wanted me here."

"Doesn't mean I _like_ it," he says, getting up. It's not like they have a lot of space to make a dramatic leaving in the cabin, so the room will have to do.

It's really the only room in the place, by all means, and Sam called dibs on it on their first day there. Dean doesn't sleep anymore, so why bother.

"You pretty good at logics, ain't ya," Dean follows him and leans on the doorframe. Sam can't shut the door on his face because the door is long gone, probably with the rest of the missing parts of the cabin. Had Sam been more religious and God not a dick, he would probably be praying for patience right now. "So tell me this, if I want it, and you want it, then what's exactly the point in not putting up? Are you trying to charm me, Sammy?"

"Who says I want it?"

"Dunno, man, wasn’t it you trying to get on my pants since you hit puberty?"

"What are you even talking about," Sam knows he's only digging his own grave and his face is heating up, but arguing with Dean has always been like approaching a goddamn magnetic field.

"You really thought you were being stealth, didn't ya? All that looks and showing off. Were you just thirsty for any dick or did you already want to fuck me by then?"

"You get the fuck outta here or I swear--"

"Always thought I was the one stuck at morals here. You’re disappointing me, Sammy."

Dean takes one last good look at him before blissfully making his way back to the living room, as smug as if pissing Sam off beyond reason was his point all along. Sam's heart is still racing for all that he had said; the worst thing maybe was the fact that none of that was exactly false, just twisted. Or so Sam wants to believe.

**.x.**

“You look terrible,” Cas states the obvious, feeling his temperature. Sam doesn’t exactly feel sick, just extremely tired; he has fallen asleep over the books more than once now.

“He’s driving me crazy,” he says, rearranging the books just to have something to do.

“It’s not just this. Your soul misses his.”

“Dean wasn’t like that when I was missing mine, why is it happening to me?”

“It just suggests again that the process went wrong somehow.”

“Great. We’re looking for an incompetent nephilim in a haystack,” Sam sighs. “How are you, by the way?”

“I’m fine,” he says, then adds without any short notice. “You love him.”

Sam opens his mouth to protest but doesn’t act on it; it’s not a false statement, and he just feels the need to protest because he knows there’s more to the meaning than brotherly love. He ends up just nodding then, a lump in his throat still forming nonetheless.

“I know this has been bothering you,” Cas continues, and Sam considers seriously panicking. Cas doesn’t seem even slightly fazed by it, though. “But it shouldn’t.”

“I don’t know how you, I…”

“I just know how it looks like,” Cas says, staring absently ahead.

“You love him too,” Sam tells him back, because it just sounds right. He’s never even had to make an effort to notice it; it’s just fair that Cas’ caught up on what Sam feels as well.

Maybe it speaks for the overall strange nature of their relationship that their feelings for Dean gives them something in common instead of something to conflict over.

“You had a pretty strong opinion about angels mating with humans,” Sam laughs suddenly. Cas sighs.

“I guess I’m not immune to hypocrisy,” he says. “It sounds overly simplistic but… the fallen angels’ intentions weren’t the best when they came to Earth. They meant harm. Love, however…”

“It shouldn’t bother you either then,” Sam says.

“He loves you too, you know this,” Cas says, sitting closer. “He’s confused and has an extraordinary tendency to blame himself for everything, but overall I’d say it’s a favorable scenario.”

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam smiles. Only in their lives he would be getting the blessings of an angel in a case of incest. “What are we getting ourselves into,” he wondered aloud. Cas got up and went closer, kissing the top of his head. Maybe it was because it was such a tender thing to do, maybe because Sam was weak, but it nearly had him crying. “I didn’t think I could ever talk about it with anyone, it’s… It’s a relief, really. I know it doesn’t look like we made a lot of progress, but I don’t think I would’ve been able to keep going if you weren’t there since day one.”

“You are my friend, Sam. We’re going to find Dean’s soul and put this reality back on track. Eventually.”

“Yeah. Eventually.”

Cas is still hovering over him, though. Sam’s not sure if he’s going to move so soon, so he just waits.

“I’ve seen the way humans communicate their sentiments for thousands of years,” he says then. “And it was only after meeting both of you that I understood the need. It’s a weird feeling. It’s very compelling.”

“Cas, what are you… Weren’t you talking about Dean?”

“I was, and you didn’t seen upset by it.”

“I’m really not, I see where you’re coming from.”

“I know your society is based on a concept of finite love,” he explains. Sam doesn’t think he can actually blush, but if he could he’d probably be blushing by now. “But I don’t really, uh… As I said, it must run in the family.”

“It’s okay, Cas,” Sam laughs, because it really is.

**.x.**

Sam had imagined it so many times that for a split second he wondered if it wasn’t just one more of these scenarios. It wasn’t, though; Dean had kissed him, long and deep and as if they had all the time in the world. He had closed the laptop then and put it on the floor to hold Dean, to make sure it was happening. If his brain hadn’t short circuited by then, he would probably be thinking that that was one of the reasons he had to go to college; not the main one, but certainly an important collateral effect. He had gone away partially to not make anything like that, to not end up kissing Dean when he couldn’t hold it to himself anymore. And now that was exactly what Dean was doing.

Dean had pulled Sam over him when they finally managed to lay down on the not nearly big enough bed, winced a little when Sam landed over his bruised ribs. Sam made a move to change positions but he held him there, locked himself in Sam with legs and arms and mouth and he wouldn’t leave there so soon.

“I need you, need you here,” is what Dean said, or rather what Sam would believe he said after ten years replaying the same memory over and over in his head. 

“Not going anywhere.”

It wasn’t long till Sam made his way down Dean’s body, minding the places where he had been hurt the best he could as he pulled his shirt off and then his own. It was a shame that the light was off because Sam really wanted to see Dean laid out like that, but his eyes were already getting used to the dark enough so that he could see the shape of his body underneath him, the white of his eyes and teeth through his parted lips.

“Wait, wait,” Dean pulled him by the shoulder suddenly and Sam froze. “Do you really want to… This.”

Sam supposed Dean made some gesture to encompass them. He went face level with him again just enough to repeat that he wasn’t going anywhere and started his journey again.

Dean buried his hands in Sam’s hair as he worked on getting rid off his shorts and boxers. Sam was terribly conflicted between doing it quickly so neither of them would change their mind or taking his time in case it never happened again. He gave Dean’s cock a couple strokes before not being able to wait any more second to mouth it; he didn’t suck it immediately, instead just licked around and sucked in just the head until Dean’s grip in his hair started to pull. He put as much as he could handle in and started to suck, still unnervingly slow according to Dean’s grunts and pulls on his hair.

Sam had been palming himself through his sweatpants and it was not without some effort that he stopped so he could use his other hand on Dean too. He had him suck his fingers and Dean moaned loud enough at that for Sam to wonder how Dean would do without another thing stuffing his mouth. That would have to wait for another time, because Sam brought those fingers back to Dean’s hole, started circling it as Dean nearly arched off the bed.

Sam didn’t stop it for a good while, his head bobbing up and down, Dean’s hand pulling lightly on his hair as much as a turn on as everything else around him. When Dean seemed to relax more he went even lower and lick his hole; if Sam could bottle Dean’s noises then and keep it forever, he would have done it. He never stopped stroking his cock while he was rimming him, till he decided to venture a finger in. Dean tensed up and didn’t took it immediately, but when Sam went back to sucking him his first knuckle went in. He could stay like that forever, and he did long enough so that his finger was all the way up Dean’s ass before he pulled his hair in a warning, but Sam was having none of that. He held Dean’s hand with his other hand and just kept going till Dean tensed up and he felt the first spurt of Dean’s come in his mouth, salty and hot and nearly enough to make him come too.

Dean melted in the bed afterwards, panting as Sam made his way up again to kiss him before he even had a chance to catch his breath. Sam knew Dean could taste himself in the kiss and that only made him make it deeper, longer. When they finally slowed down, Sam stayed on top of him, arms braced on each side of him to not put his weight on his bruised chest. Dean was mellow and relaxed as Sam had see him only a few times, and he smiled at him as he pulled Sam down back to another kiss.

“Take it off,” he said in the space between their mouths, nudging the hem of Sam’s pants with his foot, but not letting Sam go too far to do it. When he finally managed to take the pants off, Dean started feeling up his cock. Sam was so sensitive already that he nearly jumped out of the touch. “Easy. Oh fuck, that’s what you’ve been packing?”

Sam almost failed to take condoms and lube from the nearest drawer because Dean started passing Sam’s cock on his hole. He managed to get away from him momentarily and squeeze some lube on his fingers, all the while Dean staring at him. Sam warmed the lube up in his fingers before starting on Dean’s hole, but when he did he started moaning again as if he hadn’t just come a few minutes ago. Sam took his time opening him up, scissoring two fingers inside him before venturing a third one, vaguely wondering if Dean had done it before. There was more resistance this time so he slowed it down.

“Too much?”

“Just go slow,” Dean answered, voice way grittier than usual.

Sam did. He fingered him till Dean was squirming for more and less and the same time, and only then he stopped to unwrap the condom; Dean didn’t stop shallowly thrusting up even without his fingers on, his cock slowly hardening again.

Sam lined up and started to thrust, as slow as he could, watching Dean’s expressions closely. He got impatient when he was halfway in, but Sam didn’t let him pull him in at once; instead he held his legs up and kept it slow.

“You had to have a fucking big cock, didn’t ya,” Dean panted when Sam bottomed out.

“You like it.”

Sam put Dean’s legs down and went closer to him again, burying his face in his neck. Dean smelled pretty much like Sam remembered he did, but also like Sam’s soap and clothes that he’d been using that day. He thrusted faster, Dean hanging on his back for dear life, and it wouldn’t be long before he was gone.

Sam stilled his hips as he came, slower and slower till he eventually stopped and God knows how he had the presence of mind of falling to the side instead of on top of Dean; and nearly falling off the bed in the process. Dean flinched when he slipped out and pulled him back, rearranging them so that Dean was lying on top of him and throwing the condom away.

They didn’t say a word for a long time, focused on catching their breaths and probably on not freaking out too. They ended up falling asleep tangled in each other like that. When Sam woke up it was still dark outside and Dean was sitting on the bed, head between his hands. Sam felt his stomach fall.

“Dean?”

“Go back to sleep, Sammy.”

Sam didn’t, of course. It was the beginning of the end of the world that had just started to reveal for him that night. 

“You’re freaking out,” he stated, and watched as Dean’s shoulders shook as he laughed.

“Got about a hundred reasons for being so,” Dean said. Sam sat up beside him, turned the lamp side on so he could look him in the eye.

“I know this is fucked up, but it’s okay, right?” he said, almost desperate. “You have to believe it, Dean, or we can’t make it right.”

“Make it right, for fuck’s sake, Sam, I just… I’m sorry, alright?”

Dean bolted out of the bed, fishing the clothes he had been wearing from the floor and, the worst of all, gathering the pile of his own clothes and guns he had left in Brady’s bed.

“Wait, wait. What are you sorry for, what are you even talking about?”

“This,” Dean says, turning back to Sam and pointing back at the bed. “Us. I shouldn’t… Fuck, Sammy, I shouldn’t have even come here in the first place, I just fucked everything up.”

“You didn’t, if you just stop for a second and let us talk,” Sam tried, not able to let the edge of despair out of his voice. Dean was fully clothed now, and he was dangerously close to the door.

“It won’t happen again. I won’t... “ Dean stopped short in front of the door. They looked at each other for what could have been an eternity of merely two seconds, Sam wouldn’t know, but he was afraid of making even the tiniest movement. “Seeya, Sammy,” Dean said at least, the lump in his throat audible in his voice, and went away.

Sam didn’t go after him; he was glued in place, among the proofs that it had actually happened, that he had had Dean for a short while. After some time he heard the rumble of the Impala outside the building, till it got too far to hear. In the screaming mess that was Sam’s head that moment, his most painful thought was that he didn’t get to kiss Dean again.

**.x.**

Sam had lost track of how long they had been trying to get themselves out of this situation since his memories of Dean had started to fade. He’d rather not know now; the days only passed slower, Dean only added dead weight to their efforts, and Sam’s only solace was the fact that Cas didn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon. It would have to end eventually, though, regardless of them being able to gather more data or not.

Putting together everything they had theorized so far, Sam could only conclude what he had been thinking since the beginning: that it was a dream like situation. Cas agreed, Dean shrugged, and they stopped trying to reach Meg. 

"If this is in fact a reality made by illusion, then what we must do shouldn’t be so different from if we were in a dream instead,” Cas explains.

“And that would be?”

“Find something that doesn’t fit, that stands out as not belonging here.”

“Can we put them all in alphabetical order,” Sam sighs, resigned. “I thought you’d said you were gonna help,” he says when Dean doesn’t move a finger to move from the couch.

“Break time.”

“Okay,” Sam turns to Cas again, to prevent himself from detaching Dean’s head from his body. “Would that be an object, would that be like in Heaven?”

“Probably, yes. We can start looking around.”

They do it for a good part of the afternoon, relentless but unsuccessfully. There are loose strings in the carpet and weird trees around the house that could be good candidates, but nothing major happens. When it’s getting darker and Sam is considering going back to the books, he stops short next to the couch.

“Admiring the view?” Dean asks, not helpful at all, or maybe just enough, depending on what Sam would discover in a minute.

“You know, Cas,” he says. “The most out of place thing in this reality has been in our faces all this time, I just don’t know how exactly it’d make it fall apart.”

“What would--” Cas starts, but stops when he looks at Dean, then at Sam again. “I see.”

“What,” Dean says, finally taking his eyes off the TV.

“You’re the loose string, aren’t you,” Sam says, not really expecting him to know. How could he, really. He feels like the answer has been in his face all this time, but only half of it, which is almost as frustrating as none at all.

“First you didn’t existed, then your soul.”

“Okay, great, so what do you do about it?”

If there was a competition for collective sighing they could probably win it. They had poked around trying to find Dean before, even poked Dean himself, but none of it had caused even a glimpse of a way out of there.

If Sam was to reconstitute his reasoning from that specific moment of time, it would be along the lines of _oh fuck it_ , and after being such a monumental pain in the ass for the last couple weeks, Sam could at least always keep in his memory the sight of Dean’s eyes comically wide open as he surged to him in a stride, pulled Dean’s face toward him and kissed him in all of ten seconds or maybe less, who would ever know.

**.x.**

Sam wakes up with the classic rock station blasting in the radio and a terrible sense of dread in his stomach. He knows the feeling. He knows if he opens his eyes he’ll find himself in the motel room where it all started and, honestly, Sam’s not up for reliving it all again. So he just keeps his eyes closed for as long as he can, that is about the time someone else takes to stop the radio.

“Sam?”

That is Cas voice. Cas wasn’t there at first, so it couldn’t be a replay, could it? Sam opens his eyes and sits up as if he’s been shocked; he is, in fact, in the motel room, but with two major changes. The first is that Cas is there, and the second is that Dean’s right where he should had been a month ago; in his goddamn bed.

“Dean,” he covers the distance between them in a minute, shakes him by the shoulder. Dean doesn’t wake up immediately, and when he does it’s more like he’s been drugged and he falls back right away. “What happened to h--”

Three. Three major changes.

Sitting on the extreme corner of the room is a guy that Sam hadn’t notice before. Worse, he can recognize him; had seen him around the motel once or twice, assumed he was one of the employees.

He had asked him if he had seen his brother and he had said no.

“You,” Sam goes to him, livid. He rises him up from the chair by his shirt and he doesn’t even put up a struggle. “I talked to you, you--”

“ _Sam_ ,” Cas says, and Sam can finally see through his anger that the guy looks awful. He falls back to the chair, pale and sweaty, but other than that not looking exactly like he’s afraid of them.

“I thought you’d never come,” he says, and Sam doesn’t know what else to think.

“Who are you and what did you do to them?” Cas asks, his voice more controlled but clearly as angry as Sam.

“I-- I’m John,” he says, shrugging, like he knows it’s not even close of a satisfying answer. Sam had been expecting a more… angel or demon like creature, not the sad, tired guy barely keeping himself upright in front of them. For all Sam knows, he might as well be faking it, but he’s honestly disappointed. “I didn’t do anything, I mean, I did, but it wasn’t…” he pauses, breathes in. “I didn’t want to.”

“I’m not gonna ask you this more than once,” Sam says, with as much control as he can muster. “Is my brother in danger right now? Are you doing something to him?”

“No. Not exactly. I can explain.”

“Do it,” Cas demands.

“I can do things. Create illusions and the like. My mom, she… She likes to use it.”

“To use it for what?”

“To harvest the souls,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “We just put them to sleep and get it, but I don’t like it, I didn’t want to.”

“I don’t understand a word of what he’s saying,” Sam says to Cas, and turns again to check on Dean. He’s not moving, but he’s breathing, and that is as good as it can get right now.

“You said your mother,” Cas repeated, squinting at John. “How old are you?”

“Me, I… I’m twenty-four.”

Sam looks back at Cas. Weren’t they supposed to be hunting a millenary creature?

“Who’s your father?”

“That’s the problem, right,” he laughs. “I never met him. She says he’d come back if we could just get enough souls. It’s not like I miss him or something, but she wants it.”

“His father must be the nephilim,” Sam concludes. “He’s third generation. How many people are like this right now?” Sam asks him, pointing to Dean.

“Three or four. It’s all falling apart since I tried to get his soul, I couldn’t hold it.”

Sam sits on the end of Dean’s bed, puts his head in his hands. He’s tempted to tie up the kid on principle, but it’s not like he’s posing a threat. Cas seems to be having a better time trying to figure it out than him because he approaches Sam after a while.

“I don’t know if it’s more important now to understand why she wants the souls or why he couldn’t hold Dean’s,” Sam says.

“I may have an answer for the second one,” Cas says. “Souls are extremely difficult to break in smaller parts, they’re almost indivisible. Think nuclear fusion.”

“He wasn’t trying to divide it, he was trying to take it.”

“Yes, but yours and Dean’s are essentially the same. That’s how soulmates come to be. A division like that should happen only twice; once a person is born and the soul goes to Earth and again when they die and it goes to Heaven, or Hell. Your soul happened to be ripped from the same dimension Dean’s was because of forces of Hell, but a person with a quarter of angel origin wouldn’t be able to. That’s what he probably meant by saying he couldn’t hold it.”

“My head hurts now, but I get your point,” Sam says. “Where’s his soul now?” he asks louder to John.

“It fled.”

“It fled,” Sam repeats, amazed at how uncooperative the most cooperative of the monsters is being to them. Monster may not even describe him in the end anyway.

“If it wasn’t completed severed it must had been trying to come back to Dean,” Cas provides. “And it couldn’t reach him in the illusion.”

“Wake him up,” Sam snarls to John, but he looks like that just makes him want to cry.

“I can’t. I’ve been trying to wake you up for hours and I couldn’t. You have to want to leave, from inside, otherwise I don’t have it in me to bring you out.”

As if on cue, Dean groans from his bed. He sounds like someone who’s taking literally ages to wake up.

“Dean,” Sam calls him, gently slapping his face. He’d punch him if he had to. “Hey, can you hear me?”

Dean opens and closes his eyes twice before getting it right. He looks around him, confused, and then finally fixes on Sam.

“What the hell,” Dean says, and maybe it’s the way he says it, maybe it’s just because he knows, but the moment Dean opens his mouth Sam knows he hasn’t got his soul back yet. He doesn’t get a chance to say anything back, though; next thing they know, there’s a blue flash in the room.

Sam can only assume it was Dean’s soul coming back from God knows where back to him; he can be sure of it when he feels it on himself, as if a last piece finally slotted into place.

“Jesus fuck,” Dean says then, right before he hugs Sam for all of a minute before he unwraps himself from him, not looking him in the eye, and turns to John. “Who’s that?”

“The nephilim’s kid.”

They don’t get to have a lot more time to explain it because the door breaks open.

“What did you do?”, the woman screams at John, after taking in the scene in the room. Cas gets between them, but she seems oblivious to anyone other than her son. “You’re letting them go, we don’t have enough.”

“I can’t hold them, I can’t do it,” he cries, flinching when she comes closer, but Cas holds her away. Sam can almost feel sorry for him now.

He actually does, once they finally get the mother to explain; first of all, her name is Lorraine. She’s been using the motel to steal people’s souls for years now, since the father had said to her, many years before, that he would come back for them.

“His name was Samyaza,” she says. They hadn’t tied her but had to hold her every time she threatens to jump out again, desperate.

“Samyaza was one of the leaders of the Sentinels, he was one of the first to be struck by God,” Cas says. “The nephilim might have taken his name for himself, but why would he want souls?”

“To trade them in Hell, maybe?” Dean offers.

This is all they are going to get from them now. The question of what to do with them remains, but what strikes Sam the most now that Dean’s back is how they failed to notice the amount of people walking out of the motel without a soul right in their noses.

Cas releases the souls from where Lorraine had been keeping them, which is a particular spectacle by itself.

“Some of these people are gonna be pissed to see their souls coming back,” Dean says.

“How you’re feeling now, by the way?”

“Pretty good,” Dean says. "Kinda feel sorry for him now," Sam just nods as they watch Cas talking to John. "I mean, it's kinda like those kids that start playing around with an ouija board and next thing you know there's a body count. What kinda monster is named John anyway?"

"Yeah," Sam's paying more attention to the fact that Dean's talking at all than to his words, though. He’s barely said anything since his soul came back, has been all furtive looks.

“Listen, I--”, he starts, looking at his feet. “I said a lot of bullshit when I was, you know, being the dick without a soul this time.”

“You did.”

“But you know that wasn’t true, right? Not… I mean.”

“I know what you mean. Look, Dean, I’m just glad you’re here now. We can figure the rest out later.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean says as Cas walks up to them.

“Lorraine is packing. I’m going to take her to another state to start over, away from John. Both of them are going to be fine as long as they don’t do any of this again,” he says. “I’ll be watching, just to be sure.”

“Humans, man,“ Dean sighs, looking at the kid. “Do you think his father might make an appearance someday?” Dean asks.

“Maybe. If he’s going beyond what a nephilim should do, he’s going to stand out eventually. Just what he’s been doing since then… I don’t know yet.”

“Well, let’s keep tabs on them. You going back to Heaven after that?”

“I have to go for a while. Things haven’t gone back to normal there yet, I don’t suppose they will so soon. I hope to get back here soon, though.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Sam says, patting him on the shoulder maybe a little too long.

“You go do your thing, man,” Dean says, and Cas disappears before he turns to Sam and states. “Gross.”

“What?”

“You two. You’re banging.”

“What? And who even says banging--”

“That was an I’ll bang you later look if I ever saw one.”

“Can you stop saying bang?”

“Were you doing it when I was MIA? Missing me and all that?”

“Not everything has to do with you, y’know.”

Dean snorts and stares idly at the point where Cas had zapped off. Sam watches the good-humored laugh leave him as he kicks the little rocks around their feet; he knows the signs when Dean wants to say something, and also knows the ridiculous amount of time Dean takes to convince himself to do so, so he waits. Dean opens his mouth once or twice, squints at the sun when he turns to Sam again before speaking.

"When you were at Stanford, I was going crazy, you know? Didn't know what to do when you weren't around."

"Yeah, I know how that feels like."

"When I went there I didn’t… plan any of that out, it just.”

“Happened. I know, Dean, I was there. And it’s not like I don’t get that you have the right to freak out about it but it’s been years and you obviously wanted it to happen again, so what is it now? If we were supposed to be struck by lightning I guess it’d have already happened by now.”

“What? No, you think I’m scared of divine justice or something? We already pissed off both God and Lucifer and killed plenty of angels, it’s not like we need any bonus points.”

“So what is it then?”

“I’m your big brother, okay? I’m supposed to protect you.”

“Don’t start this again, don’t--”

“What you expect me to say, Sam, huh? I shouldn’t be leading you--”

“You’re not leading me, what the fuck, Dean! You never did. I was terrified you were gonna notice anything, thought you hadn’t till… Till the other guy spilled it.”

They don’t speak for a while, both breathing heavily each other’s words.

“I think you already know this,” Sam says at least. “But you needed an excuse to get away then you distorted it enough so you could believe it.”

“Sammy…” Dean sounds defeated.

“I get it, I do. I just don’t want you to think wrong of it. I’d rather have my brother with me like we are now than any other way, so if that’s what you want to then we’re deal. But for once can you just tell me what you want, ‘cause I’m tired of--”

Sam should have seen it coming, but he’s not quick enough to predict Dean pulling him down a little to his level; it’s a dirty move but it’s gentle as Dean holds him by the back of his neck and kisses him, and Sam realizes now, they haven’t kissed a lot all this time since Stanford. He had kind of forgotten even how that had been back then, unable to separate what details had really happened and what he himself added after so many replays in his head.

“I don’t want this to fuck us up,” he says then, not moving his face much more than an inch from Sam’s. .  
“It won’t,” Sam promises, entangling himself back on Dean until some car horns in the street behind them.

**.x.**

The tension between them is palpable as they pack their things back on the motel room. Sam doesn’t want to stay any more second than necessary there, so as soon as they double check if there isn’t anyone else being held captive there, they leave. They exchange a look before getting in the car and Sam knows they are both thinking of the same place.

The cabin is exactly like it was in the illusion they were trapped; it takes them hours to get there, but when they do it is worth it simply for the fact that there isn’t anyone around them for miles. They were able to spend half a day without jumping on each other clothes then, but that was it.

Now Sam sees the absence of a door in the bedroom as a good touch; otherwise they would have to have the trouble of opening it to fall on the bed. Sam curses their habit of wearing layers at each piece of clothing that goes flying to the floor, Dean laughing beneath him a sight he doesn’t want to lose again.

Sam won’t make the same mistake of not kissing Dean enough; in fact, he does so that they have to stop to catch their breaths eventually. Sam pulls Dean pants down at once and starts to travel down when Dean pulls him back up and invert their positions so that he’s on top.

“My turn,” he says, almost predatory, Sam would say, and gets down to work.

Sam can’t do much more than roll his eyes back in his head and pull the sheets when Dean starts sucking his cock because, honestly, it’s not only been a while since someone has done it to him at all, it has also been an eternity since someone did it this good.

Before he knows it, Dean is slicking his own fingers and that’s a spectacle Sam doesn’t want to miss; he inverts their positions again, pulls Dean legs up so he can watch his fingers get in and out of his hole, first one, then two, till Sam joins one of his own with them while with the other hand he touches the underside of Dean’s balls; Dean gives up on not making noise them, which is pretty much all Sam wants to hear for the rest of his life.

He doesn’t know how he still has the presence of mind of getting the condoms and lube from his bag on the other side of the bedroom, but he does; as he slicks himself up Dean keeps fingering himself, and Sam can barely put the condom on without tripping on his own foot on the way to bed.

Sam hasn’t seen Dean turned on like this in a long time, especially when he flips over, ass up in the air for him to take. Sam wanted to see his face as they fuck, but for once in his life he knows that he will still have plenty of opportunities to do so after this time.

Sam starts kissing him from his earlobe down, going through the years of scars in his back and even the decades of the ones wiped out when Dean went back to the world of the living, licks a stripe down his ass till his hole and Dean arches up to him, as relaxed as Sam haven’t seen in so long he feels a little like flying.

He fingers him a little more before lining himself up and going in, and the way down to the base while Dean muffles his moans on the pillow; Sam’s having none of that.

“Wanna hear you,” he says as he gives him a pull by the hair. He starts thrusting faster, Dean finally moaning without restrictions, lost enough in the sensations that he only moans louder as Sam spreads more his cheeks and thrusts rougher. “That’s how you want to be fucked, huh?”

Dean’s only answer is to arch up more to Sam, their bodies moving in synchrony as they chase their orgasm, too lost in everything to do much more than react to each other’s moves. Sam gets Dean off when he is close enough to it himself, and falls on top of him when he comes.

Dean turns over again and Sam ends up resting on top of him, head on his chest as he tangles his fingers in his hair, much like they used to do when they were younger and less afraid of their own reactions when too close to each other. It’s the most peaceful Sam had felt in ages, and he doesn’t want it to end never again.

“Please don’t go away again,” he says, face buried on Dean’s chest, speaking almost to his heart directly. “I can’t take it, not this time.”

Dean kisses the top of his head, wipes the tear Sam didn’t know was trying to get away from his eye with his thumb.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

**.x.**

They are considering packing their stuff and leaving again when Cas arrives, apparently pleased at how at ease they seem to be.

“How’s the happy family?” Dean asks, referring to Lorraine and her son.

“They are on their right track so far. I’ll keep checking every now and then. It’s good to see you,” he adds.

“Yeah, we didn’t really have the chance after I got the soul back.”

“Hey, Cas,” Sam says once he gets out of the bathroom to find them in the living room.

“I know you’re having a thing,” Dean says out of nowhere, and Sam’s grateful he’s not drinking anything because he certainly would have spilled it then.

“A thing?” Cas repeats, feigning such innocence that Sam’s proud of him. “You two are having a thing.”

“I, what? Sam, what’s he talking about?” Dean laughs nervously. Sam considers letting him freak out for a moment before explaining.

“Yeah, I forgot to mention Cas already knows. I kinda told him when you were being a dick.”

“Oh. Oh, okay, uh. Okay. You’re cool with it, then?”

“I don’t see any problem with your… thing.”

“Right, cool. What about your thing then?” Dean just won’t drop the fucking bone.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Sam gives up, goes up between them before Cas passes out of sheer indignation. “Me and Cas had… something when you were out of yourself. Something started there and we didn’t talk about it later because we were both too stuck up in the fact that we both love you.”

“You both what?” Dean staggers, not knowing where to put his face.

“ _Sam_ ,” Cas says, but he doesn’t sound angry, just embarrassed. “I wasn’t going to mention it now, Dean, it’s not important.”

“It does sound a hell of a lot important for me,” Dean says. Sam waits for him to keep going before saying anything. “I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious that we love you too,” he says, and Cas looks back to Sam as if looking for confirmation. He nods in encouragement. “I don’t know how this is going to work out from here but I don’t think it’s impossible, right?”

“Stay with us here for a while,” Sam says then. “Let us figure it out together.”

“Yes, I… I can do that.”

Sam pulls Cas closer to them, holding him as Dean comes up to them. He kisses Sam slow and deep before turning to Cas, who’s staring at him with some uncertainty but still expectant. Dean kissed him in the forehead as Sam bent to kiss the corner of his mouth, and Cas then felt blessed.

“We’ll work it out,” Dean said, and kissed him, and that was how Sam know it would be true this time.


End file.
